Class Act: In Conversation With Sam Claflin

The Riot Club star talks punch-ups, class wars and best friends

It’s the autumn’s most highly anticipated film, a campus story with a hot young cast and a punchy political message: The Riot Club hits the big screen this week and is set to cause something of a stir. Set at Oxford University during the termly dinner of a male-only dining club, it is adapted from Laura Wade’s play, Posh, and directed by Lone Scherfig of An Education and One Day fame. Drawing inevitable comparisons to the Bullingdon Club, it investigates the ways in which power and money corrupt. We caught up with actor Sam Claflin, who plays ringleader Alistair Ryle, ahead of the film’s release this Friday.

Your character is pretty reprehensible; do you think he has any redeeming characteristics?

I do. I had to learn to empathise with Alistair. He’s intelligent and he uses his brain, which can’t be said for the entire group. He has a lot of anger and frustration because, like many of these kids, he was sent away to boarding school at a young age. He’s not a social butterfly, he doesn’t make friends easily, he can’t talk to women, his parents don’t have that much time for him. He has no one to talk to. And then he gets mugged in his first few weeks at uni. I had to not judge him, and not hate him. I hope I portray him as a human, rather than a superhuman monster. I had to embrace him and to sympathise with him.

Have you ever been mugged?

No, touch wood. But I have been punched a few times. Once I was in Budapest, waiting in a bar for my friends. We’d been filming a battle sequence and my brain was a bit frazzled. I went outside to make a phone call and this guy came up to me and said, ‘Are you Hungarish?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m English.’ And then he punched me in the head. I lost my shirt, a shoe and my phone; I had to walk back into the bar completely dishevelled. The other time it happened was in a mosh pit-type situation with loads of people crowded together, everyone a bit rowdy, and someone kept bumping me. I held my ground and then he swung at my head. He tried to headbutt me and then ran away. I never got to the bottom of it.

Why do you think this film’s important right now?

I think it’s interesting to have an insight into a world that’s very rarely got the limelight on it, unless it’s a political version of that world. And yes, it does definitely have its political connotations. But for me it’s about a gang of guys who are in the upper class. And so often, films depict gang lifestyle in the lower classes and you see them striving for power and striving for more money and battling against the world. And this isn’t that different in the sense that it’s about 10 guys and, yeah, they have money and they have power and they’re gonna grow up to become something. But it’s the same thing, other than the fact they’re wearing posh suits instead of hoodies, it’s a gang culture. It’s never really been done before and I think it’s interesting just because it puts a little spotlight on that world. You see how the other half lives.

Were you all quite a gang on set? Did you all hang out?

Yeah, and we’re still a gang now. I mean, we can’t help but be close. It was so organic and so easy, there was never any difficult moment on set and all of us worked in the same way, we’re all on the same page and we all got on like a house on fire, on and off-set. And we still do. I left this filming process with nine best friends. I’m very lucky.

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The Riot Club is released nationwide on Friday 19 September. For more information see theriotclub.co.uk

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